weizmann science writer

The Weizmann Institute of Science is one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary research institutions. Hundreds of scientists, laboratory technicians and research students working on its lushly landscaped campus embark daily on fascinating journeys into the unknown, seeking to improve our understanding of nature and our place within it.

The Institute’s roots go back to the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, built in 1934 with the support of Israel and Rebecca Sieff of London in memory of their son Daniel. It was established upon the initiative of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the driving force behind its scientific activity and its first President. A world-renowned chemist, he headed the Zionist movement for many years and later became the first President of the State of Israel. In November 1944, with the agreement of the Sieff family, it was decided that the Sieff Institute would become the nucleus of a large-scale research institution named after Dr. Chaim Weizmann. On November 2, 1949, in honor of Dr. Weizmann’s 75th birthday, the Weizmann Institute was formally dedicated.

The Institute has five faculties – Mathematics and Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry and Biology – and the faculties in turn are divided into 17 scientific departments. In addition, the Feinberg Graduate School, the Institute’s university arm, trains research students pursuing graduate degrees.

The Weizmann Institute serves as a meeting place for scientists from different disciplines, setting the stage for multidisciplinary collaborations and the emergence of new research fields. To encourage this creative activity, the Institute has created some 50 multidisciplinary research institutes and centers, most of which provide an intellectual rather than physical framework for joint projects. These institutes and centers stimulate activity in a multiplicity of fields, including brain research, cancer research, nanotechnology, renewable energy sources, experimental physics, biological physics, environmental studies, the study of autoimmune diseases, plant sciences, photosynthesis, genetics and others.

Today the campus community numbers more than 2,600: some 1,000 scientists and scientific staff, 1,000 research students, 220 postdoctoral fellows and 400 administrative employees. The Institute has some 250 research groups headed by senior scientists and professors, of whom approximately 100 were born in Israel; the rest have come to Israel and to the Institute from 28 countries: Afghanistan, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, France, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. Each year, around 500 scientists from dozens of countries around the globe visit the Weizmann Institute or come to work on its campus. And each year, approximately 25 international scientific conferences take place at the Institute.

The Feinberg Graduate School, the Institute’s university arm, was established in 1958. The language of instruction is English, and the average advisor-student ratio is 1:3. Some 300 are pursuing M.Sc. degrees, and 700 Ph.D. degrees. About 45% are female. About a third of the 220 postdoctoral fellows come from the United States, Canada, Latin America, the European Union and Africa, as well as Korea, China, India, Australia and New Zealand.

The Davidson Institute of Science Education, established in 2002, provides a continuation and expansion of Weizmann Institute activities in the area of science teaching. The “Perach” all-Israel tutoring program, currently headquartered at the Davidson Institute, enlists students from all the Israeli universities to serve as tutors to underprivileged youth. Each year, some 33,000 youngsters take part in activities organized by the Weizmann Institute’s Young@Science section including the Science Mobile, a teaching lab-in-a-van developed at the Weizmann Institute. The Clore Garden of Science, an award-winning outdoor facility is the first science museum of its kind in the world. Its 100 hands-on exhibits allow visitors to learn about science and nature through play and firsthand experience.

Members of the Weizmann Institute’s Science Teaching Department design new curricula for middle and high schools, experiment with future teaching methods, write textbooks (in Hebrew and Arabic), create games and interactive computer programs and implement special teacher training courses.

Today’s new articles involve flow: the flow of positrons through the Universe and the flow of particles around the tiny cilia of corals. They involve beauty and mystery, as well. The particle flow, imaged in brilliant colors, won first place in the photography category of the 2013 Science/National Science Foundation International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.…

Perovskite (say it: pə-ˈräv-ˌskīt, -ˈräf-). It may never become a household word, and the chemical formulas (eg., CH3NH3PbI3−xClx ) are as long as the name. But if you find yourself, in the not-so-distant future, adding new-and-improved solar panels to your roof, they may well contain a perovskite layer. If they do, it will be these…

The next time you reach into the fridge for a midnight snack – take heed: New research by Weizmann Institute scientists has shown that the time at which you eat your meals might have a profound effect on your liver triglyceride levels. Their research was conducted on mice, but if found to be true…

“Billions of dollars are being spent on weapons of mass destruction. A small fraction of that could go so far to engage more Israeli and Arab scientists in collaborative projects in order to create a critical mass that will bring about peace.” The speaker is Dr. Zafra Lerman, President of the Malta Conferences Foundation, which…

Today’s guest post is by Weizmann Institute physicist, Prof. Micha Berkooz. Berkooz, a string theorist, recently organized a conference at the Institute on “Black Holes and Quantum Information Theory.” We asked him about Hawking’s recent proposal, reported in Nature under the headline:”There are no black holes.” Celebrated theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has opened a…

A recent paper by Weizmann Institute scientists suggests that we might be able to break the third law of thermodynamics. This is how that law was originally formulated in 1908 by Walther Nernst: “It is impossible for any procedure to lead to the isotherm T = 0 in a finite number of steps,” (source: Wikipedia).…

Prof. Mario Livio takes the long view on science. In his newest book, Brilliant Blunders, he points out some of the mistakes made by some icons of science — Einstein and Pauling among them. More importantly, he insists that researchers must be free to make mistakes. Livio recently gave us a taste of his subject…

More science-themed haikus. I seem to keep writing them because we tend to put out three “mini press releases” at a time (a relic of the days when they were printed on two sides of a fold-up page and mailed). So I could pick just one to blog about, or I could try to fit…

In the future, stem cells created from our own skin cells will be used to renew damaged organs or grow new ones. We know this promise has often been made before, but the latest research in the lab of Dr. Jacob (Yaqub) Hanna is producing some solid findings that may make you believe in the…

Of the four new articles online on our website, three happen, purely by accident, to be on physics research. The three are very different, and yet each is an illustration of the ways that basic physics research changes our world – in small and large, practical and enlightening ways. And each is situated at a…